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Instant messaging allows you to quickly exchange messages with your online friends

Written by Bogdan Popa on October 14th, 2011

You love chatting, you sure do. And although there are a lot of instant messengers out there, possibilities aren’t quite infinite, because it all comes down to just a few big names such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype and a few others. Yahoo for instance has one of the most popular instant messaging applications out there, with millions of people now using Yahoo Messenger in every corner of the world.

By definition, Yahoo Messenger is a software solution that allows users to send and receive messages through an Internet connection, but the application has evolved so much lately that it’s now a lot more than that. It comes with a built-in photo sharing feature, file transfer capability, video calling support, online gaming, skins and many others.

The setup process shouldn’t be too difficult if you choose the offline installer. If you go for the file downloader provided by Yahoo, just remember to double check your options, because it might also make some changes to your browser and to the default search engines.

Once installation is complete, you have nothing more to do than to write down your Yahoo username and password and you’re ready to go. We must admit that we’re a bit annoyed by the so-called Yahoo Insider window that pops out every time we log in, but there’s also an option to disable it in the preferences menu.

Yahoo Messenger’s interface is nothing special and pretty much relies on the same elements as all the other instant messaging applications out there. There’s a contact list for knowing who’s online and who’s not, plus a few options to pick a status message and an avatar. The magic however begins once you open a chat window with one of your contacts.

Here you can easily send messages, send files just by dragging them in the conversation window, share photos, start a video call, play a game and many other activities just with a single click. It’s that easy, seriously. Plus, the latest versions also come with Facebook integration to track your contacts’ activity on the popular social network service, so Yahoo Messenger makes another major step towards the social area of the Internet.

We weren’t impressed however with video calls quality, as some of the videos streamed through webcams looked awful, although everything was great when tested on other similar apps.

All in all, Yahoo Messenger remains a top pick in the instant messaging category and is seriously worth a chance in case you’re looking for a free way to chat on the Internet.